Blog Tour & Extract – Twister River by Siobhan MacDonald

Happy Tuesday everyone, I hope you’re all having a good week so far 🙂 I’m super excited to be a part of the Twisted River blog tour! In this fun-packed post, you’ll be able to read an extract from the book, which will most definitely leave you wanting more!

Book Extract

OscarCurragower Falls, Limerick, IrelandLate October

She would never have fit as neatly into the trunk of his own car. He presses two fingers against her beautiful neck. Just in case. No pulse. The blow was fatal. He looks at her one last time and closes the trunk.

Her blood is all over his hands. Oscar stares at the curious patterns forming on his pale skin. No latex gloves this time. He tries to think. In the cold he hardly moves, watching the tiny pearls of red slide down the coarse hairs to his wedding band. The burning in his stomach spreads upward to his chest. His control is slipping, his panicked breath forming small clouds in the dark. Oscar is in turmoil. From man to shivering animal in the space of three minutes.

Across the road, water rages over the falls. Oscar has felt like this before. It was a long time ago but the memory is vivid. In fourth grade, he punches Annabel Klein so hard in the stomach that she vomits. Another memory flashes before him. This time he’s standing over Birgitte, watching her die. Up the road, the church bells sound a mournful chime. What’s done is done.

There comes the sudden beat of wings. Looking up, Oscar sees an arrowhead of swans slicing through the night sky. A splutter of rain starts to fall, the drops making a tinkling sound on the plastic bags scattered at his feet. Shards of glass from a smashed jar of peanut butter mingle with exploded bags of popcorn. There’s a squashed banana— the flesh pulped from its skin— and a packet of brownie mix daubed in blood.

Should he look in the trunk of the car one more time to make sure?

He fumbles for the catch. It isn’t like his BMW. This is a VW sedan. The car they’d agonized in, attempting to sort things out. He’d so wanted to straighten things out. His fingers slip left and right, searching for the catch. The VW badge is smeared with blood. There it is. He squeezes with his thumb and forefinger.

“Dad?”

He freezes. He hadn’t seen the kids pick their way across the gravel.

“Elliot?”

His nine- year- old is shivering in pajamas in the driveway. Jess, his twelve- year- old daughter, is behind him.

“You’ve been gone a long time, Dad,” says Elliot.

It’s more a question than a statement.

Jess stands there, perplexed, eyes innocent and wide. He sees her scanning the debris of the grocery shopping all over the driveway. His children cannot know what just happened. They must be protected, no matter what. The roaring in his ears begins to build again. He wills his mouth into a smile, pulling his lips over his teeth. He hopes it looks convincing.

Jess’s face drains of color as she edges toward him. The sound in his ears is almost unbearable.

“What is it, Jess?”

He can see her mouth is moving. She is asking something.

“What did you say?” he shouts.

“Where’s Mom?” she shouts back.

The Blurb

Kate and Mannix O’Brien and their children live beside Curragower Falls in Limerick, Ireland, in a house they love but can barely afford. What her family needs, Kate decides, is a vacation. So when she sees a beautiful Manhattan apartment on a house swap website, it seems like a dream come true.

Oscar and his wife, Hazel, live with their two children in a gorgeous apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. They too need a vacation, and Hazel has long wanted to take her children back to her native Limerick. The house swap seems like the perfect solution. But this is anything but an ideal vacation, and the discovery of a body is just the beginning.

Twisted River by Siobhán MacDonald is available now in eBook by Canelo.